Tuesday, March 30, 2010

It's been a while I know...here's an explanation

Wow! It has been a while since I have been on here. Life has been such a roller coaster as far as our homeschool journey is concerned. Oh my! If I would only have listened to the advice I got almost 2 years ago! Almost two years ago (when Seth turned 3 and Aaron was not even 1 yet) I made the decision to homeschool. I know without a doubt it was what God wanted. It was a decision bathed in prayer and I knew there was no doubt this is what God wanted for our family!

But I got over zealous! I was so excited that I couldn't wait to get started and wanted to get started right then!!! I found the The Homeschool Lounge (awesome homeschool social network) pretty much at the same time I made the decision and so I got on there and started asking for advice. I got so much advice of moms telling me to wait, my babies are so young, don't push it, you have plenty of time. I chose to ignore this advice. I didn't want to wait. I even kind of stopped prayerfully considering my options (probably because I knew deep down that is what God was wanting as well) and I dove in. I thought I needed to do organized preschool and I dove in.

I became obsessed with homeschool blogs and seeing what other moms were doing and blogging about and I wanted to be one of those moms, blogging all these wonderful ideas for other moms to gleam from me. I wanted to completely move "past" the phase of being a new homeschool mom to being one that other moms admired...just like I was admiring these other moms. (and I did find some AWESOME ideas and we did have fun with these ideas!)

It took a while to realize that there were so many times that I would do activities for the sake of having something to blog about...but not necessarily putting my kids needs number one. I would make sure I had the camera in hand when I started an activity to make sure I got pictures of it and then I couldn't wait to run and put them online and say "hey look what we did".

(man I am being brutally honest here!! Hopefully you don't see me as a complete loon and run far away! I won't blame you if you do though)

I have struggled and struggled and yes there have been amazing highlights and yes the kids have had fun and they have learned!! And those are memories from this experience that I will CHERISH forever! I am thankful that there were good highlights during this chaos!

For Christmas I got the Maxwell's Managers of Our Homes and was so excited!! I just knew this was going to be the answer to the scheduling problems that we were having and the consistency problems we were having...I did not realize at the time that it was an answer to prayer...but a totally different answer than I was looking for.

I started going through the book (which I LOVE by the way and will continue to use it in our homeschooling journey!!) and started trying to piece the schedule together and it kept hitting me that I did not have a quiet time with the Lord and started wondering if that was where my problem was. So I decided to schedule it in...I knew I was going to have to do it first thing in the morning because that was the only time it was going to work without the kids being around...I knew I was going to have to wake up way earlier than I have been to get it done. I am so NOT a morning person but I thought I would give it a shot!!

OMG!! That was what I needed. I needed that time to spend in the Word and in prayer and submitting my will to God and accepting His will. (It has become my favorite time of the day!) I slowly started recognizing his voice telling me to "wait, they are so young, they need learning through living, they need play time, there is plenty of time for school" and I started backing off.

Let me tell you I have been happier and the kids have been happier. And I have found so many different opportunities for learning through living and my kids are learning so much about character and how to behave and how to act and our learning basic life skills that I now believe more than ever is what they are suppose to be learning at this age. There is plenty of time later for academics! I have put my camera down and have not even worried about my blogs and have just enjoyed my kids!

And since I have been seeking God every morning for His will I have been guided to the correct curriculum to start this fall (Seth just turned 5 in March) and things are falling neatly into place. (btw - we are doing My Father's World)

I am truly looking forward to starting kindergarten with Seth this fall! I am so looking forward to God leading our schedule and can't wait to see what He has planned for us!

What does this mean for this blog? At this point I just don't know. I do know that it will not be a priority. I'm sorry if that upsets some but hopefully you understand that my kids have to be my priority. I am hoping that it can be away where I can record some fun things we do and share some things! I am still wrestling with whether or not our lives needs to be so publicly displayed and whether or not this would be better if it was private. Time will tell on that.

Please be aware that I probably won't be on here much still in the next few months. Once we get started with kindergarten in the fall who knows...we will just see.